The road to Utopia is the road to Hell. — Communism and socialism are the opiates of the intelligentsia. — The left, in its eternal and futile quest for "equality", is more than willing to abolish liberty and sunder fraternity.

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Corporations, Unions, and the State

When left-libertarians discuss right-to-work laws they claim to discern a pro-employer — specifically, pro-corporation — tilt on the part of government. I will not play the futile and foolish game of trying to disentangle the effects of decades’ worth of pro/anti/corporation/union enactments. My modest objective is to ask whether the corporation or the union (or both or neither) is inherently antilibertarian.

Does corporate status per se enable an employer to coerce employees or prospective employees?

Does state-enforced recognition of labor unions by employers amount to coercion?

The obvious answer to the second question is “yes.” Apologists for labor unions will nevertheless assert that coercion by the state, which enables coercion by labor unions, is necessary to offset an “unnatural” advantage that accrues to an employer if the employer is a corporation?

What is that “unnatural” advantage? What power is bestowed by corporate status that is lacking in a sole proprietorship, partnership, or other non-corporate form of organization? It is said that corporate status involves two unique characteristics: perpetual existence and limited liability. Non-corporate organizations can enjoy the former easily enough, through bequests, property transfers, agreements that allow for the admission of new and/or replacement partners, and so on. These are simply contractual arrangements that do not require the state’s existence, except as a neutral enforcer of voluntary, non-fraudulent contracts between compos mentis adults. In sum, perpetual existence does not confer upon the corporation an “unnatural” advantage when it comes to dealing with employees and prospective employees.

What about limited liability? The key artificiality of limited liability is that it shifts the responsibility for debts from the directors, officers, and owners of the corporation to the corporation itself. But I fail to see how that artificiality plays into dealings with employees and prospective employees. In fact, the artificiality lends stability to the corporation, which is advantageous to employees and attractive to prospective employees.

Nor is it clear to me that the corporation could not exist in the absence of statutory approval. The corporation is usually considered a creature of the state — as if it could not exist absent statutory authority — simply because the earliest corporations were creatures of the state and often were instruments of state power. But there are other beneficial and “artificial” commercial arrangements (e.g., banking and credit) that began and thrived before the state injected itself into such arrangements. The advantages of corporate status — as a way of fostering commercial expansion — would, I think, be recognized in a common-law regime.

The bottom line on the corporation: It would exist in the absence of the state (or recognition by the state), and its essential features do not give it an “unnatural” advantage in dealings with employees and prospective employees.

I cannot say the same for the labor union, which exists by and for coercion. A union can exist without coercion, in certain limited circumstances, for example, an unskilled, fungible labor force whose members lack the means to uproot themselves from a relatively isolated location. (Think “Welsh coal miners,” for instance.)

But where there is a diverse labor force and diverse employment opportunities, it is not in the interest of the more skilled (or independent-minded) workers to cast their lot with their less-skilled brethren. Their interest is served by the ability to bargain for the best available combination of compensation and working conditions. The submission of highly skilled workers to unionization comes about mainly because (a) they have no legal option (in jurisdictions that back the union shop) and/or (b) “scabs” face threats ranging from harassment to ostracism to violence, directed not only at “scabs” but also at their families.

Employers, for the most part, view unionization as coercion. Yes, there is the occasional business that chooses to recognize a union, even if the business is not compelled to do so by statute. But recognition, in such cases, is the the free choice of the businesses in question. Most other businesses make the opposite choice, where they are allowed to do so. Nothing more need be said on that point.

In summary: The corporation is not a coercive institution; the labor union is. Right-to-work laws are justified on libertarian grounds because they eliminate the coercion of workers and employers.

Comments & Correspondence

Now that this blog is in hiatus, I have closed comments on all posts. If you wish to communicate privately, you may e-mail me at the Germanic nickname for Friedrich followed by the last name of the great Austrian economist and Nobel laureate whose first name is Friedrich followed by the 3rd and 4th digits of his birth year followed by the usual typographic symbol followed by the domain and extension for Google’s e-mail service — all run together.

On Liberty and Libertarianism

What is liberty? It is peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior.

John Stuart Mill opined that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." But who determines whether an act is harmful or harmless? Acts deemed harmless by an individual are not harmless if they subvert the societal bonds of trust and self-restraint upon which liberty itself depends.

Which is not to say that all social regimes are regimes of liberty. Liberty requires voice -- the freedom to dissent -- and exit -- the freedom to choose one's neighbors and associates. Voice and exit depend, in turn, on the rule of law under a minimal state.

Liberty, because it is a social phenomenon and not an innate condition of humanity, must be won and preserved by an unflinching defense of a polity that fosters liberty through its norms, and the swift and certain administration of justice within that polity. The governments in and of the United States have long since ceased to foster liberty, but most Americans are captives in their own land and have no choice but to strive for the restoration of liberty, or something closer to it.

Who can restore liberty? Certainly not the self-proclaimed libertarians who are fixated on Mill's empty harm principle and align with the left on social norms. Traditional (i.e., Burkean) conservatism fosters the preservation and adherence of beneficial norms (e.g., the last six of the Ten Commandments). Thus, by necessity, the only true libertarianism is found in traditional conservatism. I am a traditional conservative, which makes me a libertarian -- a true one.

Notes about Usage

“State” (with a capital “S”) refers to one of the United States, and “States” refers to two or more of them. “State” and “States,” thus used, are proper nouns because they refer to a unique entity or entities: one or more of the United States, the union of which, under the terms and conditions stated in the Constitution, is the raison d’être for the nation. I reserve the uncapitalized word “state” for a government, or hierarchy of them, which exerts a monopoly of force within its boundaries.

Marriage, in the Western tradition, predates the state and legitimates the union of one man and one woman. As such, it is an institution that is vital to civil society and therefore to the enjoyment of liberty. The recognition of a more-or-less permanent homosexual pairing as a kind of marriage is both ill-advised and illegitimate. Such an arrangement is therefore a “marriage” (in quotation marks) or, more accurately, a homosexual cohabitation contract (HCC).

The words “liberal”, “progressive”, and their variants are usually enclosed in quotation marks (sneer quotes) because they refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are, in fact, destructive of liberty and progress. I sometimes italicize the words, just to reduce visual clutter.

I have reverted to the British style of punctuating in-line quotations, which I followed 40 years ago when I published a weekly newspaper. The British style is to enclose within quotation marks only (a) the punctuation that appears in quoted text or (b) the title of a work (e.g., a blog post) that is usually placed within quotation marks.

I have reverted because of the confusion and unsightliness caused by the American style. It calls for the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks, even if the periods and commas don’t occur in the quoted material or title. Also, if there is a question mark at the end of quoted material, it replaces the comma or period that might otherwise be placed there.

If I had continued to follow American style, I would have ended a sentence in a recent post with this:

What a hodge-podge. There’s no comma between the first two entries, and the sentence ends with an inappropriate question mark. With two titles ending in question marks, there was no way for me to avoid a series in which a comma is lacking. I could have avoided the sentence-ending question mark by recasting the list, but the items are listed chronologically, which is how they should be read.

This not only eliminates the hodge-podge, but is also more logical and accurate. All items are separated by commas, commas aren’t displaced by question marks, and the declarative sentence ends with a period instead of a question mark.